25 September 2013

The wrong hat?

Sometimes I just don't understand people. This morning, I was taking my wee boy to nursery on his balancebike, and we came past this bus stop. As you can see, it is particularly badly designed, because it's set back from the curb, with a stone wall on the other side. As we came by, the pedestrians remained standing in the bit between the shelter and the wall, even though a bus was approaching. So, having only a few minutes ago lectured the wee boy about avoiding pedestrians, I went along the narrow section of pavement between the road and the shelter, as we often do. The bus driver had been edging up and stopped well clear of the start of the shelter - as you would, so that the door is open right where the woman in the picture is standing. But i could see that he'd been holding back on doing this until the two year old had cleared the shelter. So I looked up to give the driver a wave of thanks for being so careful.

But instead of acknowledging it, the driver shook his head in a 'tsk, tsk' sort of way, and then refused to meet my eyes or respond to me. So, I put down my bike and walked back to the door of the bus to ask what the problem was. At which point he closed the doors in my face and refused to make any contact. Even when I knocked on the doors. I suppose I shouldn't have done that, but I wanted to know what I had done wrong.

Had I prevented the passengers from entering the bus? Should we have waited patiently on the other side of the pavement rather than risk delaying the bus by two seconds? I hazard to say that if I'd been driving the boy to nursery, I'd have delayed him more.